Faithful to Communion

March 8, 2020

Sister Joanne Delehanty, OP

Today we celebrated the first communion of Chimamanda, Henry, and Olivia, and I want to highlight the following.

You’ll notice that there is a direct line and even a straight path between the baptism pool and the altar. That’s because the belonging that we celebrate at baptism is supposed to end up around the altar table so that we become the body of Christ.

But I’m telling you, you don’t learn anything about the Eucharist (what it is, what it’s for, what it is about, the gift of it, the grace of it, the challenge of it, you don’t learn any of that) unless you immerse yourself in it.

Unless you keep coming to it. Unless you are faithful to it!

And so I am asking the parents and the St. Benedict the African community to keep these children, long after their first communion, faithful to this sacrament.

People will say “Oh, I’m just not into it” or “It doesn’t do anything for me.”

But it isn’t about us!

It is about God. And our life in God. And our being formed into the body of Christ by the Body of Christ. And our becoming church. That’s what it’s about.

It’s about us being faithful in just a tiny little reflection of the awesome, amazing, abundant, extravagant, faithfulness of God to us.

And that is worth being here. So as these children start to join us around the table of the Lord, be aware of that.

April 11, 2020

April 2, 2020

As we approach the feast of the Resurrection on Sunday, April 12, we may well feel like we are entombed by precautionary measures that have altered the rhythm of life these days given the threat associated with coronavirus.

March 8, 2020

March 1, 2020

It might be more accurate to say that there is the “forty day fast within Lent.” Historically, Lent has varied from a week to three weeks to the present configuration of 46 days. The forty day fast, however, has been more stable.

February 5, 2020

In 1949, famed Harlem Renaissance writer Langston Hughes celebrated Negro History Week (the precursor to Black History Month) with members of the Oblate Sisters of Providence and their students at the all black and Catholic St. Alphonsus School in Wilson, North Carolina.

January 5, 2020

It is a new year, a time to look back and reflect, to look ahead and rethink some things and make decisions. Today in this beginning of the new year I want to speak of a charge to us, the people of God of St. Benedict the African parish.

December 15, 2019

Today is the 30th anniversary of the ordination of Father David Jones. He was born on November 17, 1962 and ordained on December 15, 1989. His loving parents and supportive family helped to place him on a path toward God. This intention must have already been in his soul because it was apparent in him at a very early age.